Gothic Short Story

Today I went to Trick or Canning afterschool, which took place in a neighborhood of nice, new, rich houses. Many of the houses seemed to have people living in there to keep the houses, not just owners O_O. They’re RICH! We got a good amount of cans though, and I got a good amount of candy ^_^. Everyone’s happy! I wanted to wear a t-shirt over my head like a shirt ninja, but I decided not to out of laziness >>;. So instead I wore the skin of the Invisible Man! ‘Twas a good night though, my first time going out into the public and bumming candy of people.

So, the gothic short story, here we go. I finished this around 7:20 or so, and I barely even have 4 1/2 pages, and I had to make my all my margins 1.1 inches and making LARGE white spaces at the bottom of the page because “the paragraphs went on the next page.” The story is based off of how annoying my alarm clock is, and how I sometimes hear it in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason @_@. It’s also based on that time I was awoken in the middle of the night by the alarm and I continually kept on pressing snooze instead of power because I was half asleep. And now, ladies and gentlemen, not the Beatles:

Beep

“I need a new alarm clock…” he mused, as he hurriedly rushed to the bathroom to get ready for work. His old clock was broken after 10 years of good service; it had worn out and died. He had overslept for work, unaware of the malfunctioning clock until the sun peered into his room, waking him up two hours later than when he had to get up for work. He brushed and shaved in a rush, then burst out of his door half dressing up, half eating an energy bar. He leapt into his car and raced to work.

“Simmons, why are you THIS late for work? Two hours, do you know how much you missed? I had to rely on that other idiot bimbo secretary while you weren’t there to type up my letter to…”

He drowned out his boss’s tirade against his lateness with daydreaming. He had given his excuse of a lack of a working alarm clock, but his boss would not take the excuse. Had he not be such an outstanding secretary, he would have been fired. His work at the office was tedious, filling in spreadsheets with data, typing up letters for the boss, and other little jobs, but it gave him enough income to get through the day.

After an eventless day at work, Simmons went to the nearby appliances store and to get a new alarm clock. He was browsing through the models when he came across a unique one, last model of its kind in the store. A simple black box, it had a reading for the numbers in the front, and the basic buttons were on the top: a power button, snooze, and buttons for setting the time. It was also the cheapest clock there, going on clearance. He was about to pick it up when a ratty old beggar stumbled into the aisle.

“Dun…dun tayksh the box…box bad…evil box very bad…jesh leave…” the vagrant muttered incoherently. He drunkenly staggered past Simmons, disappearing around the corner of the aisle. Simmons, his curiosity piqued by how such an old, tattered vagabond who clearly did not have the ability to buy anything from the store would have been let in, followed the beggar, only to find that he had truly disappeared around the corner – he was nowhere to be found. Simmons decided not to dwell on it anymore, and picked up the alarm clock and went home.

When Simmons got home, he immediately installed his new clock. His night passed without much distinction; he ate dinner, and went to sleep, ready for the weekend and the rest that it would bring.

“BEEP BEEP BEEP…” Simmons woke with a start, his monotonous alarm blaring into his ear.

“Damn, I didn’t set the alarm to wake me at 4, must have forgotten to change the settings,” he muttered. He, still half asleep, dragged his hand across the top of the clock and pressed down on a button to shut the machine up. As quick as he woke, he dove back into bed, exhausted from his untimely awakening, and fell asleep nigh immediately.

“BEEP BEEP BEEP…” sounded the clock again, and Simmons woke again, slightly miffed from having to get up again.

“I must have pressed the snooze button.” He turned on the light, located the power button, and pressed it firmly, and made sure he pressed the power button. “There”. He shut off the light, and fell asleep again, without disturbance this time. His dreams were filled with a faint beeping, though, somewhere, far off, barely noticeable, yet still there.

His day passed by, uneventful, and he went to bed early. He had just fallen into a fitful sleep when once more the beeping shook him awake, and Simmons, puzzled, slammed the button down in frustration, not knowing why the alarm went off again, even though he remembered setting it not to ring for the night. The beeping woke him up several more times throughout the night, each time aggravating him even more.

He woke at noon, completely not refreshed from having to wake up every so often to shut the alarm off, and still half asleep. He decided to go over to a friend’s house for a birthday party. He was enjoying himself, having forgotten about the night, when he heard the beeping again, that monotonous, repetitive beeping, piercing through the loud music being played, striking his ears. “No, no, not here, not now, not again, no…” Simmons repeated to himself, covering his ear with his hands, when the beeping stopped suddenly.

“Hey, yeah, it’s Jake…” It was apparently a partygoer’s cell phone ringing, but the similarity to his alarm clock haunted him. He could not get past the likeness, as if the beeping was chasing him wherever he went.

The incident had left his mind by the end of the party, and he got home without incident. He collapsed into bed, tired from his lack of sleep and the party. He had to get as much sleep as possible for work tomorrow, which would have been possible if it weren’t for the alarm clock once more ringing in the middle of the night, multiple times, its piercing beep giving Simmons a rude awakening. He went to work sleep deprived, with bags under his eyes.

“Simmons! Get some more sleep, will ya? I can’t work with someone who’s going to fall asleep at the computer!”

“Yes, boss,” said Simmons suppressed a yawn. Simmons sat down to his daily grind of data entry, and started working, but he heard something he dreaded, something he thought he’d never hear until later. He heard a beeping sound again, though only faintly. His left eye began twitching unconsciously. It sounded closer, and Simmons clenched and grit his teeth.

“Stop the beeping!” Simmons roared as he finally couldn’t hold it back any more.

His boss pulled Simmons aside out of his office by his collar and whispered into his ears menacingly “What on God’s good green earth is wrong with you, boy? You come in late last week, now you come in sleep deprived, then you start yelling nonsense about beeping? And DURING my meeting! You may be my best secretary, but that doesn’t mean a single damn thing if you don’t keep your mouth shut when you need to!”

“But I could have sworn there was some beep-“

“Shut your mouth about your stupid beeping and get to work!” The boss shoved Simmons aside and went back into his office. “So sorry, sir…”

Simmons went to the bathroom, fazed by this apparent fact that the beeping was imaginary. He splashed water over his face to try and wake himself. “It wasn’t imaginary, it was probably just the boss trying to knock some sense into me,” he rationalized. He returned to his computer and started to work again, trying to hear for any beeping sound, but not hearing any.

When Simmons left work, his coworkers all looked at him oddly, as if to say “What’s wrong with you?” Simmons dismissed their looks though, and went home.

When he got home, it was silent. Simmons slumped into his armchair, exhausted from the lack of sleep, exhausted from the stress from work, exhausted from seemingly hearing a beeping everywhere. His eye started twitching again.

“No, why me…” Simmons moaned with dread. The beeping was back, arms wide open to greet him. “Why is it ringing now!” Simmons yelled in anguish. He ran to the plug, ripped it out violently of the socket, opened his window, and flung it out of the house with all his force. It dropped three stories from his apartment, and shattered on the pavement. But the beeping was still in his ears, the beeping still permeated the room, he could hear nothing but the beeping, monotonous, unstopping, and he had no way of getting rid of it now. He covered his ears in pain, but the beeping grew louder and closer. He tried to drown it out with his own howling and screeching, but the beeping still was there, unhindered. It was as if the beeping was coming from inside his ears, and he couldn’t get the sound out. He started hitting his head on the wall to try and knock the sound out, each knock on the wall drawing blood, but even still the beeping continued, inexorable, everlasting. He grabbed a kitchen knife, and plunged it into his ears to try and rid himself of hearing, but the sound still continued, drumming in his head, without end. His eyes closed shut in pain, and then they opened. He saw the way out, a way to leave the beeping behind, to escape the unending torment. Simmons rushed towards and launched himself off of his balcony, and he shattered on the ground, like a china doll.

“Jesh like I said…” as the vagrant stumbled past Simmons’ fallen corpse.

Listening to: Elton John-Bennie and the Jets.

i am the breath of the dead